Monday, September 2, 2013

Lots of all-beta (that includes strontium), tritium, but not so much cesium or gamma emitters.

But first, let's do the quick recap of the water treatment system at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant that has been operational since mid 2011:

Water (filtered water + treated water) is injected into the reactors to cool the corium.

Water gets highly contaminated with radioactive materials from the corium, accumulates in the basements of the reactor buildings and turbine buildings which are connected.

Highly contaminated water get somewhat diluted by the groundwater seeping in (400 tonnes a day).

The water is then transported from the turbine building basements to either Central Radioactive Waste Treatment Facility or High Temperature Incinerator Building, which have been converted to storage of contaminated water.

From these buildings, the water is transported to Cesium Absorption Apparatus (which is currently Toshiba's SARRY only; Kurion's system has been off-line for a long time now, and AREVA's co-precipitation decontamination system is not used anymore). Most of radioactive cesium is removed by this process, from tens of thousands of becquerels per cubic centimeter to ND or close to ND. This water still contains high tritium and high all-beta. It also contains chloride, from the seawater injection in the early days of the accident in 2011.

The water treated at SARRY then undergoes desalination process, using Reverse Osmosis Apparatus to remove chloride. (Evaporative Concentration System, another desalination process, is not currently used.)

After being treated by Reverse Osmosis Apparatus, the water, though still high in tritium and containing all-beta (which cannot be removed at this point, as ALPS has been halted and there is no effective way to remove tritium), is mixed with filtered river water, and gets injected into the reactor.

The waste water after reverse osmosis process, high in chloride and high in all-beta and tritium, is stored in the tanks (assembled metal tanks or welded tanks), and this is the water that is found leaking from the tank(s) this time.

Here's the latest nuclide analysis of water at different stages of water treatment, published on August 8, 2013. No.8 water (in red rectangle) is the RO waste water:

Chris Busby: I think this is an indication that it has actually deteriorated significantly, very suddenly in the last week. What they are not saying and what is the missing piece of evidence here is that radiation suddenly cannot increase unless something happens and that something cannot be leakage from a tank, because gamma radiation goes straight through a tank. The tank has got very thin metal walls. These walls will only attenuate gamma radiation by 5 per cent, even when it is 1 cm thick.

Yeah, that Dr. Busby doesn't know anything huh? Just like Arnie Gundersen. Both of them should be ignored and considered uneducated, /SARC off/

The spread sheet is from TEPCO..there is no other information source..one of the MAJOR problems all are facing. Japan is carefully controlling the information. So all sites use what they can find, and its better than nothing. If not testing for Stronium or PU or U..well its not showing on the charts SFK or others can locate--and believe me I think they are looking. Lets keep focused on the problem and not make critical comments of this author.

I've been following the Fukushima disaster since hour 1 (especially in Physics Forum) and i have a question about your article above: you seem to say that all the water stored in the tanks went through SARRY process (for Cesium treatment). But is it true? I had the impression that (maybe based on wrong elements?) that the installation was not capable of treating all the flow of contaminated water and that some of this pumped water was stored like that in tanks? Again i may be wrong but can you confirm that 100% of the water stored in tanks went at least through SARRY process?

Anon at 4:49AM, yes, the water has gone through SARRY, which has two lines.

The original contaminated water (mixed with groundwater) sits either in the basements of reactor buildings and turbine buildings or in the two buildings mentioned in No.4 point in the post. The buildings have been used as water storage.

Anon 6:46AM, SARRY uses vessels like Kurion's cesium absorption system. Radioactive materials are absorbed in the vessels filled with absorbing materials like zeolite and other formulations as the contaminated water is fed through the system. They replace the vessels after certain number of hours, and store the used vessels in the storage building specifically built for such vessels.

Highly radioactive sludge that came out of AREVA's system has been stored in similar vessels.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

About This Site

Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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